Debunking Foie Gras, America's Most Controversial Luxury Ingredient

Foie gras, or fattened liver of ducks and geese, is an ingredient synonymous with luxury. It’s a staple of the French cooking that still defines the upper echelons of fine dining, but it has also found wider appeal in the hands of today’s creative chefs, who deploy it in everything from macarons to Vietnamese-inspired pho (Wylie Dufresne’s cheekily named “Pho Gras”). Even rappers are beginning to shift their filet-mignon dreams toward the luxe liver: “Foie gras at every meal,” brags Action Bronson in his 2012 track, “Brown Bag Wrap.”

Yet for all its popularity in culinary circles, foie gras is also one of America’s most controversial ingredients.Animal rights groups claim that foie is a “diseased” product because it requires the force-feeding of ducks, called gavage, which these groups view as inhumane. In 2012, the entire state of California banned the production and sale of foie gras.

Before1984, fresh foie gras was not even available in the United States, aside from the black-market variety, smuggled illegally from France inside monkfish. Ariane Daguin, the owner of D’Artagnan—the largest distributor of foie gras in the United States—took note of this scarcity when she came to the U.S. from Gascony.

For all its popularity in culinary circles, foie gras is also one of America’s most controversial ingredients.

“There was huge potential in America, but nobody knew what fresh foie gras was,” says Daguin. By 1984, D’Artagnan was the sole distributor of domestically-produced foie, and the product caught on like wildfire (Daguin’s customers included heavyweight chefs Charlie Palmer and Daniel Boulud). At the same time, animal rights activists began targeting the product.

We wanted to explore the ethics of the ingredient first-hand, so we took a trip out to the Hudson Valley Foie Gras farm, where D’Artagnan ducks are raised, to see how it’s made. As we visited the stress-free, well-cared-for ducks and watched them go through their force-feeding, it quickly became clear that there’s more to foie than the nightmarish factory-farm scenes we’d seen before on YouTube.

On our trip, we also quizzed Daguin—one of the country’s foremost foie experts—about the factors that make foie gras so expensive, why domestic foie gras production is different from factory-farmed foie gras in other parts of the world, and much more.

The expert:

Ariane Daguin is an encyclopedia of foie gras knowledge. She is the owner of D’Artagnan, which supplies foie and other luxury ingredients to the nation’stop restaurants, as well as home cooks via D’Artagnan’s mail-order service. Daguin is also a French expat, cookbook author, and inspiring entrepreneur.

Myth: Foie gras originated in France.

Daguin says: We think foie gras was discovered for the first time in ancient Egypt, by the Jewish slave farmers of the Egyptians. One day, a farmer—I like to think it was a woman—was taming a goose that was there at the pond and decided to kill it and cut it open, and saw that beautiful liver inside. The liver was enlarged because that goose had been force feeding itself. After that, the farmers wanted to reproduce the foie gras in a domestic manner, so they could enjoy it more regularly.
And that’s why, when you look at a map of the world, the exodus of the Jewish population corresponds to the culture and tradition of foie gras—it’s pretty amazing. Those paths are the same because it is the Jewish farmers that traveled with that culture of raising the ducks and geese for foie gras.

Myth: Ducks are in pain when they are force fed.

Daguin says: If you’re not educated and you don’t know what you’re looking at, you see the photo of the duck with the funnel in its throat and you think, 'Ooh, that must hurt.' For a human being, yes, it would hurt. But the duck doesn’t have a neck. Instead, it has an esophagus lined with collagen, which is insensitive like the nail on your finger. I have pictures of ducks where you can see the outline of a body of a fish in the esophagus.
Also, because their windpipe is located underneath their tongue, ducks have no gag reflex. Sometimes people see the force-feeding and say, 'Their neck! They can’t breath! I’m sure it hurts!' In nature, an adult bird will pick up little pieces of cereal, put their beak way inside the throat of a baby bird, and vomit inside of it. If your mom was doing that, it would hurt you. But ducks are physiologically different from humans.
What’s more, a duck’s physiology allows it to gorge itself and store food. In nature, ducks force-feed themselves cereal grains 14 days before migration. They migrate twice a year: In June, they fly from North Africa to the Scandinavian countries, and in September/October, they fly south to spend the winter in warmer places.

Myth: Foie gras is overpriced.

Daguin says: You have to realize, the average chicken you get in the supermarket is 35 days old. Our ducks are a minimum of 50 days old. So, of course a duck is going to naturally be more expensive than a chicken—even before you take force-feeding into account—because it lives longer and eats more. When you look at any poultry, as far as dollar sign, you look at what they ate. And the longer they live, the more they ate.
With foie gras duck, on top of all that feeding, you have the last two to three weeks where they not only eat, but they eat intensely because you want to grow their liver. And they eat huge amounts of corn and some soy. Plus, we ship our fresh foie gras the next day. It’s expensive, but we have to do it.

Myth: There is no difference between duck and goose foie gras.

Daguin says: Gascony [an area of southwest France where Daguin is from] is the biggest producer of geese foie gras. Geese foie gras is bigger, more delicate, and it has a less strong flavor—but it’s pretty close to duck foie. If you have both a duck and goose liver on a plate—and you don’t do my job for a living—you might not recognize which is which. But if I put them side by side, I’ll see the difference. The duck is stronger; it has a “duckier” taste. The goose is typically richer and fattier.
Hudson Valley Foie Gras produces only duck foie gras. The ducks, called Moulard, are a crossbreed of Muscovy and Pekin. They are healthier and more solid, whereas purebred geese are very fragile. With geese, it takes a longer time to produce foie gras. Geese need almost six months breeding, then 30 days just for the force-feeding. With ducks, you need nine weeks of breeding, then two weeks of force-feeding.

Myth: You can get fresh European foie gras in the U.S.

Daguin says: Right now, the only foreign foie gras in the U.S. comes from Canada. There used to be three foie gras farms in the U.S., but then it became illegal to force-feed ducks for foie gras in the state of California, and one farm was forced to shut down. There’s a farm in Canada that can deliver to the U.S. called Elevages Perigord, which we buy some foie gras from. I chose to work with Hudson Valley Foie Gras and Elevages Perigord because they don’t use antibiotics or hormones, they don’t keep the ducks in cages, and they are doing things the right way.

Myth: Factory farming of foie gras can be ethical.

Daguin says: There are regions around Alsace, Perigot, and Gascony—as well as places in Eastern Europe—who have started to produce foie gras in the manner of a factory farm, and that’s not good. It’s not good for the foie gras industry, and it’s not good for the product. If the animal isn’t treated well, it isn’t going to taste good on the plate. They are, effectively, killing the foie gras industry.
The awful videos of gavage that you see are from these high-production, low-cost factory farms. People see those videos online, then taste a subpar product, then they say, “I’m never going to try this again.”
These producers are lowering foie gras quality because they are trying to lower the expense. But if you pull down the quality of the product and get the price so low, there is no value to this product anymore.
At the end of the day, you still have quality restaurants intent on putting the best product on the plate, so small farmers have stayed the course and continue doing the right thing. That’s what we do here at D’Artagnan.

Myth: Foie gras is difficult to prepare.

Daguin says: People are intimidated to cook foie gras because of the price, but it’s very easy to do. There are three very simple rules to searing fresh foie gras, and you have to follow them.

Get your pan extremely hot. There should be nothing (not even oil or butter) in the pan.

Cut the foie gras lobe into 1”- or 1¼”-thick slices

When you sear the foie gras, it must be at room temperature. If the inside is too cold, you will have a raw interior and seared exterior.

After that, all you do is take your foie gras slice, season it with salt and pepper, and put it in the pan. After about 30 seconds, flip it. After cooking it another 30 seconds on the second side, take it out, put it on a paper towel (because it will have released a lot of fat), add a little coarse salt (you must re-season because lipids do not take salt easily), and serve it immediately. You can’t go wrong following these steps.
If you find yourself with too much fresh foie gras, you make a terrine. You put it in the oven—very low, slow-cookin— and when it gets to 115°F internal temperature, you press it and then you can serve it cold. The terrine stays good for two weeks. I’ve also frozen foie scraps and grated it over soup.
Recipe:Classic terrine of foie grasRecipe:Seared foie gras

Myth: Foie gras can be served with anything.

Daguin says: I know there are people doing foie gras crème brûlée, but I have yet to try a foie gras dessert that I really like. If you don’t have acidity, and you just have sweetness, the flavor will be one-dimensional, which kills it. Everybody is free to do their own thing. The only thing I would say that is a huge no-no is foie gras with spicy stuff. Treating foie like BBQ is a crime.
Because it’s so rich, the best accompaniment ever will be a balance between sweetness and acidity. This will balance the richness of the liver and not hide the delicate flavor. A perfect balance can be half port and half balsamic vinegar, reduced. Or apple sauce with vermouth or sherry vinegar.

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